Something about this volume of MOME makes it my least favorite in a while. It’s entirely possible that it just caught me on an off day, or that I’m all anthologied out. But while there’s always a tension in MOME between the best material it contains and the lesser stuff, and while that’s always been a big part of why I enjoy the series so much, I feel like we’re starting to see those two qualitative groups coalesce around two separate ways of doing comics. It’s almost like MOME is becoming two anthologies at once, and my problem with that is I’m not sure which one will win out in the end.

On the one hand, you have experimental takes on genre. In this volume, that school is represented by Dash Shaw’s dystopian science fiction, Tim Hensley’s continuing riff on Archie comics “Wally Gropius,” Derek Van Gieson’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark-type fable, a wordless journey into space with T. Ott, and Josh Simmons’s latest savage horror comic. It probably doesn’t surprise anyone that this is where my sympathies lie. Shaw’s “Satellite CMYK” comes first, telling the story of a Battlestar Galactica-esque satellite colony of survivors that has become so rigidly stratified that the mere existence of other levels of the structure is the subject of 1984-Brotherhood-style subversive conspiracies. Shaw conveys this idea by using a different color for each level. It’s not quite successful–the sameness of Shaw’s faces makes it harder to follow than it ought to be, and the power of the final reveal image is undercut by needless captions–but it’s as ambitious, imaginative, and emotionally rooted a bit of SF worldbuilding as any of Shaw’s work in this area. Hensley’s “Gropius” stuff continues to fascinate me with its angular character designs, kinetic non-action, and subtext of high-capitalist violence. (Riverdale this ain’t.) Van Gieson’s strip took me a couple reads to figure out that it was, in fact, a strip and not a series of discrete vignettes, but once I grokked what was going on, I really dug (no pun intended) that final graveside kicker, and the Gorey/L’Autrec/Alvin Schwartz watercolor visuals. Simmons, finally, can seemingly do no wrong anymore. I’m having a hard time coming up with any cartoonist whose work is as angry as Simmons’s has been lately. House, Jessica Farm, “Batman,” “Night of the Jibblers,” and this issue’s “Jesus Christ” (!) are breathtaking in their brutal nihilism–it’s horror that aims to punish, to tear down. In this case that’s literally the plot: a gigantic centaur-like Messiah descends from the heavens simply to wreak havoc on the tiny inhabitants of the endless city in which he lands. He’s too big for them to comprehend, physically or mentally, and their lives couldn’t matter less to him. It’s Lovecraft’s cosmic horror by way of the undergrounds’ hyper-detailed art (those buildings! that smoke! that bravura sequence when Jesus regurgitates a flaming sword!), taboo-shattering violence, and full-frontal nudity. Follow it with an equally bleak scratchboard science-fiction parable by Thomas Ott and you’ve got a heck of a one-two punch.

But then. The other pole is whimsy, and here’s where MOME loses me. This issue’s David B./Jim Woodring-style guest star is underground stalwart Gilbert Shelton, who serves up a limp, laughless story about his shitty recurring rock band Not Quite Dead being secretly sent by the government to overthrow the government of a banana republic. Sure, he draws the living shit out of it, but the whole thing feels so far past its sell-by date–a Grateful Dead spoof with jokes about hot-button cultural touchstones Elvis Presley and Madonna? Rock ‘n’ roll using its awesome power to subvert civil authority?–that it doesn’t make a difference. Underground-indebted MOME regular serves up a strange story about a folk singer named Minnie, drawn to look a lot like Phoebe Gloeckner’s similarly named stand-in character for no discernible reason; it’s a story about bein’ down n’ out and just wantin’ to play th’ blooz and it sucks that Greenwich Village is filled with yuppie scum now and blah, blah, blah. It’s nice-looking enough, but I don’t come away from it feeling or thinking anything new. Conor O’Keefe’s McKay-like figurework and Sara Edward-Corbett’s sharp Partyka-bred line (as well as her “Rabbithead”-indebted tiered narrative) cut through the ugly-cute clutter, as does Laura Park’s suite of strips about things she’s done at night (look at that quilt!), so it’s not as though the lighter/zanier material is completely undistinguished…I don’t know, I guess I just wasn’t in the mood. I definitely don’t know why we needed page after page of David Greenberger listing album titles according to the number of syllables they contain, you know? And that kind of decision makes me nervous for the future of the anthology.

3 Responses to Comics Time: MOME Vol. 13: Winter 2009

It does sound from here like “I’m all anthologied out” is at least part of the problem. I am undoubtedly projecting, of course, in that I’m recovering from that problem with regard to my own reading. But even so, I do hear some familiar chords in there, of having seen and thought about and written about so much that only a very select chunk of new material gets the mental and emotional space it might need to really make an impression.

Some of that is in turn of course a result of reading your reprinted reviews along with the new ones, I do acknowledge. Still, it might well be time to cut the pace way back.

Everything I Do

Hi! My name is Sean T. Collins and I am a writer. Here are links to basically every place on the internet where you can find what I do. A site for everything and everything on its site, that’s my motto. Non-tumblrs up top, tumblrs down below.

All Leather Must Be Boiled: News and views on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and its television adaptation Game of Thrones, located at boiledleather.com. Home of the Boiled Leather Audio Hour podcast, co-hosted by Stefan Sasse. Of all my tumblrs this is where you’ll find the widest range of posts, as I often rope in pretty much anything I’m thinking and writing about television, fiction, fantasy, genre storytelling, politics, whatever. Beneath the gold, the bitter steel.

The True Black: Comics written by me and drawn by a host of talented collaborators. Also contains news of upcoming comics projects.

Bowie Loves Beyoncé: You can’t say no to the beauty and the beast, darling. Images of two of the best human beings and popular musicians, David Bowie and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter. This was my first tumblr, so it’s what shows up when I like your posts.

Fuck Yeah, T-Shirts: No man with a good t-shirt needs to be justified. Good pictures of our greatest garment.

Superheroes Lose: Superhero publishers love putting pictures of their superheroes losing on the covers of their comics. I love putting them on this tumblr. When we imagine people who can do anything, this is what we imagine.

Badge: Stories of police brutality, overkill, and overreach in the United States of America, reblogged from around the internet with minimal comment. Before they bring the curtain down.

The Deep Ones: There’s something in the water. Sea monsters real, extinct, and imaginary. Co-founded and co-curated by me and Julia Gfrörer.

The Devil in Love: A man of wealth and taste. Images of the infernal with undeniable aesthetic and/or erotic appeal. Founded by Julia, co-curated by me.

Homage to Catalonia: Images of churches on fire or in ruins as a means by which to contemplate the positive and negative energy generated by the buildings and realized in the flames. Founded by me, co-curated by Julia.

Comics Democracy: Comics with over 10,000 notes on tumblr, found while tumbling and reblogged without comment. I will show you a world without gatekeepers.

Cool Practice: What I wanted to be and how I wanted to be it, one song at a time. Thoughts on music and its intersection with “coolness.”

Sean T. Collins on Comics: A repository for writing about comics (mostly comics on the web, mostly alternative-genre comics at that) for my former day job, this tumblr will also sometimes reblog writing-about-comics I’ve done elsewhere.

Sean T. Collins on Culture: The twin of seantcomics, this tumblr houses my old dayjob writing on genre culture that influenced me as a kid. Who knows what I’ll get up to with it eventually?

The Boiled Leather Audio Hour: A dedicated tumblr for my ASoIaF/GoT podcast, created for iTunes syndication purposes, but hey, you can follow it if you want.

In addition, I created several one-off tumblrs to host individual webcomics written by me and drawn by other people. I plan to reblog all of them to The True Black eventually, but here they are in their native habitats: